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Despite Art Week's purpose—to put art within reach of the average man's pocket-book—many exhibitors got fancy ideas about value. In Manhattan's impoverished Harlem, at the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, asking prices ranged from $50 to $2,000. Painter F. G. Schoen of Jacksonville, Fla. pinned a tag for $10,000 on his picture of a Madonna and child. In Rochester another $10,000 Madonna was submitted by an Italian immigrant woman named Caroline Vara. Painter Vara's Madonna, which swooned biliously with unintentional surrealism over a macrocephalic child, was painted after a $175 correspondence course in art. When asked why the high price, Caroline Vara, who is receiving Federal relief, replied simply: "Itsa verra nice-a peekch."
By the time the shouting had died, impartial critics tried to estimate Art Week's serious value. Though artists, big & little, were loud in their joy over Art Week's quantity production, many first-rate artists had either refused to exhibit or had hung their least salable work. Though by mid-week Cleveland bought $1,250, San Francisco $1,300, New Orleans $210.15, Los Angeles $2,000, Denver $600, Jacksonville $580, Portland, Ore., $329.10 and New York City $2,700 worth of art, sales managers, disappointed in these figures, figured that Art Week's main purpose (selling art) was a flop. But art-loving President Roosevelt was undaunted. Said he: "I feel justified in recommending that Art Week be made an annual event. . . . The fact that so much was done in a brief preparatory period this year justifies the establishment of this work on a permanent basis."